The present invention generally relates to a vehicle odometer. More particularly, the present invention relates to an odometer/tripmeter for tracking business and personal mileage traveled by a vehicle.
Individuals who use his/her vehicle for both business and personal use typically have to track their mileage for either business or personal trips in order to be reimbursed or keep records for tax purposes. In some cases, an individual may wish to track the total accumulated mileage for their vehicle for each of several different purposes. For example, an individual may wish or need to keep track of the total mileage traveled when using the vehicle for business or personal use so as to properly track business expenses associated with the vehicle over the course of a year or other time period. Such tracking is important to business owners in the United States, who may deduct from their taxes the percentage of the expenses for a business owned or leased vehicle that is related to the business use of the vehicle.
Currently, to keep track of mileage traveled for a particular trip, an individual may either reset a tripmeter in the vehicle or note the currently displayed reading on the vehicle's tripmeter or odometer prior to commencing the trip. Subsequently, upon completing a trip, the individual must read the tripmeter or odometer and take mental or physical note of the reading prior to driving the vehicle any further distance. Often, however, individuals forget to read the tripmeter or odometer upon commencing or completing the trip or forget to reset the tripmeter in the first place. Thus, current accessories provided in the vehicle for the purpose of tracking vehicle mileage are often of little practical assistance.
The above-noted problems are even more frustrating to those individuals who not only have to track the mileage for each business trip, but also have to add the mileage of each trip to a cumulative annual total. Presently there are no practical, commercially-available vehicle accessories that allow an individual to keep track of cumulative travel distance for a plurality of trips that are not sequentially traveled such as typically occurs when an individual intermittently drives their vehicle for business and personal use. Although most vehicles are now equipped with a tripmeter that tracks mileage separate from the odometer and that can be reset at the beginning of a trip, such tripmeters cannot be stopped from accumulating mileage and then resume accumulating from the last recorded mileage figure. Existing accessories also do not allow for such mileage information to be automatically recorded and transmitted to a computer or other device for tracking mileage for billing, reimbursement, and tax record keeping purposes.
Systems are described in the prior art that enable a driver to track business mileage separately from non-business mileage. See, for example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,579,242; 5,497,323; 5,267,159; 5,046,007; 4,875,167; 4,755,832; 4,685,061; 4,593,263; and 4,547,781. However, such systems still require the driver to remember to manually inform the system whether the vehicle is being used for business or personal purposes prior to beginning travel. Also, many such systems include their own housings, multiple push-buttons, and other components such as printers and magnetic disk drives, that make these devices impractical and too expensive to implement in a vehicle.